looking for advice on lead n follow flights

On Saturday, November 3, 2018 at 6:45:48 PM UTC-7, wrote:
On Wednesday, October 31, 2018 at 8:15:04 PM UTC-5, Roy Garden wrote:
I'm an averagely useless XC pilot living in a visitor intensive place and
get asked to do Lead n Follow flights with some regularity.
I've tried, on quite a few occasions and short of herding cats, I can't
think of anything less likely to succeed.

The main issue is, keeping track of where people are and them knowing
where I am.
Flarm is great (no, it's not, it's fekkin useless) and the fallback Spot
the
gliders only works with any regularity up to about 8000' and gets a bit
spotty above that.

I don't want to have the guys right on my tail as I want to go check that
the "Next" bar is actually working before they follow me over. so that
leads to 10 (ish) mile separation frequently.

(The point of "Lead n follow", I think, is that it's a relatively safe, if
slow
way to go exploring.?)
If I say "Follow me chaps!" then head off, I could (and do, with some
regularity) **** it up. Fine when it's just me but the responsibility of
having people who don't quite "get" how nasty it can be, following me
stymies the whole thing.

Is there a way, to keep 10-15km separation and have people be able to
find me when I know it's good?
That we can do with kit that is "out there" ? (almost everyone has an
Oudie / flarm / phone with them)

I know this is urasB, but frankly, I could do without "Nigel" in his best
Essex Nasal, quoting that I should call out grid references from my map
. . (Which I use frequently, to block the sun, from the primary nav
display)

Ideas chap (s/eses)?

I'm kind of at the stage where I really really don't want to as it's
always

a cluster through loosing people now, but I do have the time and
inclination, if there was some kind of semi reliable way to track / be
tracked.

After following this thread I'm nonplussed with most of the responses. In my experience, nobody but nobody can be told or shown or coached to fly x-country. Yes, you can pick up advice, you can emulate things you see other pilots do at your field or at contests, you can practice on Condor but that all won't do much good unless you really, really want to learn how to do it and - as importantly - continually strive to improve your performance. I'd like to meet the successful pilot who credits his skills to individual instructors or fellow pilots who "taught" him or her to do it. Unless you go out there and fly, mostly on your own, away from the home field and in challenging conditions, every day there's a chance to make turn points and come back, you will not be a good x-country pilot. With that said, lead and follow is mostly garbage IMHO.
Herb

Hey, Herb, what do you REALLY think about lead and follow? Well, it worked for me when I first started flying cross country, perhaps not as tightly coupled as some here have suggested (except for one XC camp).

Tom